State-champion Porter ready to buckle down on recruiting

It took Michael Porter three years to reach high school basketball’s mountaintop but he can finally call himself a state champion.

The no. 2 player in the 2017 Rivals 150 recently captured his first state championship by defeating Barstow High School 62-60 in a thriller at Mizzou Arena on March 12. Porter went for 31 points and 19 rebounds and is still replaying the final seconds in his head.

“It was a lot of joy,” he told PowerMizzou.com. “It’s been three years. First year that I got one. Little bit of relief but a lot of joy. The dudes I got to do it with made it really special.”

Porter has devoted himself to adding muscle over the past year and it paid off throughout the season. After playing last season at 185 pounds, he added 25 pounds over the course of the year and played at 210.

He saw himself improve as a locker room presence as well.

“I think became more of a leader this season,” he said. “A vocal leader. I think I became a better defensive player than I’ve been in the past and a lot of growth physically and mentally. I never got down on myself.”

The 6-foot-8 small forward is now preparing for his final AAU season with MoKan Elite and will be the headline player of a loaded team that also includes Trae Young, Carte’Are Gordon, Jared Ridder and his younger brother Jontay Porter. The team started practice this weekend in Kansas City.

The Father Tolton Catholic star is currently down to 11 schools that include the likes of Missouri, Kansas, Washington, Syracuse, Kentucky, Duke, Stanford, UCLA and Oklahoma among others. Porter visited Kansas three times during his high school season and Jayhawks head coach Bill Self was at a few of his games as well.

Porter’s father Michael Sr. is an assistant coach on the Missouri women’s basketball team, where his two older sisters Bri and Cierra both play. The Tigers men’s staff watched Porter throughout the high school season and had four coaches sitting courtside at Mizzou Arena for the state title game. Washington head coach Lorenzo Romar, who is Porter’s godfather, was also in attendance.

Porter said he plans to cut his list down soon and already has a good idea of the schools he’s going to stick with. He plans to make it public in the near future.

“In my head its cut down a little bit, I just haven’t put it out yet,” he said. “But in my head it’s lower than 11.”

Because of his family’s busy schedule, Porter has no idea when his next visit will come or where it will be to. He tries to base his visits on his AAU or camp schedule and see if he has time for a visit while he’s in the area.

“It’s usually when I’m in that vicinity, like for instance if I’m in Indiana for a tournament, I’ll try and visit that campus,” he said. “That’s usually how I do it.”

Porter plans to commit by the end of the summer and said he’s trying to speed up the recruiting process “as fast as I can.”

He has an idea of where he wants to take all five official visits but said there’s a very good chance that he doesn’t get to all five.

“There’s five that I have planned out but once I visit three maybe I have an idea of where I want to go,” he said. “So I don’t know if it will end up being five but that’s the goal right now.”

Porter has said for a while that he plans to go to college with Young, who he considers to be his best friend the two have talked package deal for a while now and Porter estimated a 75 to 80 percent chance that it happens.

Both players have Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Virginia, Duke and Kentucky on both their lists and the two visited Kansas together in late January.

Porter added that at the end of the day, both players have to pick the school that each of them is most comfortable with.

“There’s some schools that I’d go to that he probably wouldn’t go with me and same thing with him,” he said. “But a lot of the schools we have in common, I think he’d go with me so we still really want to play with each other in college. At the end of the day we have to do what’s best for ourselves.”

PowerMizzou.com will continue to follow Porter over the coming months and will provide updates whenever they are available.